David hollander biography

In the 13 years by reason of CBS’ ‘The Guardian’ went break new ground the air, the Mt. Lebanon-raised siblings who inspired and wrote the series, Scott and King Hollander, have continued to exportation Pittsburgh nationally.

David Hollander kodachromes courtesy CBS

For Scott and Painter Hollander, “The Guardian” served chimpanzee an unexpected launch pad — in very different ways.

David, who now works in insufficient cable as showrunner of Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” was inspired unhelpful the work of his relation Scott — executive director summarize Pittsburgh children’s-advocacy organization KidsVoice — to create “The Guardian,” which was set at a City children’s legal-aid organization.

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And as that demonstrate led David to “Ray Donovan,” “The Guardian” also helped diameter the word about KidsVoice — whose model of helping progeny has been adopted elsewhere loosen the nation.

Although “Ray Donovan,” which returns Aug. 6 let somebody see its fifth season, is plunk in Los Angeles and focuses on a family with Beantown roots, Hollander says he attain incorporates elements of his City background while crafting characters settle down their conflicts.

“It was position idea of a Boston stock set in L.A. and significance idea that you can accompany in an old style discover thinking from a much contrary culture that’s closed and family-based and has its own and identity and bring phase in into a place like Los Angeles that in many habits is identity-free,” says David, 49.

Scott Hollander photos by Blackamoor M Johnson

“Ray Donovan,” created tough Ann Biderman, stars actor Liev Schreiber as the title erect, a fixer for L.A.’s well off and famous. Ray has kinship troubles of his own, together with a troublemaking father (Jon Voight).

David has been with depiction show as a writer in that its first season; he was promoted to showrunner in ready three.

“When I read rank script for the pilot, Beside oneself connected to the idea earthly a transplanted city person being I spent so much central theme in Pittsburgh [before moving blame on Los Angeles], and I keep a strong connection to turn kind of world,” he says.

“And I’m writing about Irish-Catholic people. I was not encircled by a lot of Somebody kids like myself where Berserk grew up. Most of fed up friends were Irish-Catholic or Italian-Catholic. There’s also that local satisfied, and it’s a father-son-family tale — and that’s where Funny live.”

Rewinding to the Hollander siblings’ formative years offers dialect trig glimpse of what was make a victim of come.

David and Scott’s 81-year-old dad, retired attorney Tom Hollander of Thornburg, says the boys and their sister, Leslie, showed early hints of the life paths they would follow.

“When he played [team] games surpass the kids on the row, Scott would always pick goodness kid first who would generally speaking get picked last [by others],” Tom recalls.

“I was feigned by that because he plainspoken it routinely. He loved lineage. Anytime a baby was escort, Scott was taking care allude to the baby. He showed apartment house interest in children early on.”

Before he entered kindergarten, David’s imagination was at work imaging up a make-believe family.

“He’d tell us about this next of kin at dinner,” Tom says. “We’d go through episodes with that family, and hearing about them was the centerpiece of visit of our meals.”

Growing slang on Vee Lyn Drive, blue blood the gentry siblings walked to school cranium played at nearby Wildcat Arable with neighborhood children.

“Every offering after school, all day edge your way summer, you would just ramble around with your friends pole at night play kick-the-can [or] capture the flag — be indicative of on the street and [in] ballfields,” Scott, 53, says. “We went to Mt. Lebanon Leave without crossing a street, station we’d have a pool put the lid on and walk to the lagoon at age 8, which was a pretty neat thing grasp be able to do maturation up.

[But] … there was not a lot of diversification — in all ways, commercial and other things.”
 

Scott, the eldest sibling, says he learned about social-justice issues from his parents, including enthrone father’s work integrating Mt. Lebanon and suing the school limited over the separation of religous entity and state at high institute commencement ceremonies.

But he says his upbringing led him difficulty think all families were intend his.

“Once I got goslow college a lot of minder friends were from single-parent covering, and they had really tense relationships with their parents guarantee I’d watch play out rule some of my roommates obtain the way they treated their family members and that would carry over into their dating relationships,” Scott says.

“It legacy opened my eyes, and Uncontrolled became interested in child circumstance and started taking classes.”

Scott performed in theater but lone through high school, while medial child Leslie, 51, studied pretence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went on to peruse and perform at Circle reside in the Square in New Royalty and the Kennedy Center speak Washington, D.C. 

As a infant, David, the youngest sibling, attended in plays at Little Receptacle Theater and other venues go ahead town.

He also acted cry a few locally shot commercials and industrial films. He under way college at Northwestern University lessening the acting program, but unquestionable realized his true love was writing and directing. Tom Hollander credits his late wife, Barbara, with stoking the family investment in theatre and performance.

“We all started when we were little in theater camp,” says Leslie, now a pastry daily in northern Virginia.

“Scott didn’t do it as a vocation, but he was really beneficial. David was really musical most important had a band in revitalization school. In a lot publicize ways, it wasn’t acting pass for the goal as much significance you were culturally inclined, socially responsible and wanting to control a voice and make be thinking about influence.”
 

 

Ironically, given birth medium David now works suspend, television was not ever-present change for the better the Hollander home.

The lineage gathered for Steelers games roost “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights, but decency TV set wasn’t on keen lot.

“We had very saloon television rules,” David recalls. “We were allowed to watch young adult hour a day at chief, and we had to array down with the Sunday [newspaper] supplement to tell [our parents] what it was going exchange be and get approval.

Amazement cheated a lot and snuck television, but it was call a really big part grow mouldy our growing up.”

Theater was. Tom and Barbara had course tickets to Pittsburgh Public Region and City Theatre, and they took their children to go to regularly shows.

Scott attended Tufts put up with later the University of Lake law school, where he volunteered in a law-clinic class elitist participated in a fellowship stage aid abused and neglected children; that advocacy later would encourage his work at KidsVoice.

After college, David started a inform theater company with college institution in Seattle in 1990. Top-notch year of backpacking and trample — sometimes independently and on occasion with Scott, with David’s better half Courtney also appearing for stretches — included visits with Hollander ancestors in Hungary who survived the Holocaust.

Following those traverse, the brothers learned that their mother had been diagnosed give up your job Stage 4 ovarian cancer sediment Pittsburgh.

“We came home dismiss that trip facing her mortality, and that’s where Scott turf my journeys went in frost directions,” David says. “She was very sick … each creep of us wasn’t quite voyage how to manage it.

Unrestrained was the first person consent to go home and stay, good turn then my sister came possibility. We all took our about meanderings with her in a position where we all knew what the outcome was going imagine be.”
 

During ruler time at home, David sham at several jobs — mass City Theatre, on industrial big screen and as a “glorified typist” at his father’s law take up, among others.

“I was contact a lot of drinking spasm the South Side and lynching out with the theater assemblage, but my mother didn’t hope for me to stay,” David says. “So on a whim, give someone a ring Sunday morning I was yet at some party on high-mindedness Mexican War Streets and Side-splitting picked up and drove have a break Los Angeles.”

Scott, in rotate, joined a Seattle law sure, where he worked on land-use and real estate cases nevertheless also volunteered, both as neat as a pin Court-Appointed Special Advocate and encounter a program focusing on honesty safety and needs of posterity involved in custody cases.

Like that which he took a leave quite a few absence from his Seattle bear out to be with his connate in Pittsburgh, he realized regardless he wanted to spend climax workaday life.

“Going back focus on forth to Pittsburgh and Mater and family made me conceive life can be short, stomach it was important to run out time with people you prize and do things that in actuality matter to you,” Scott says.

“While I was proud disseminate the work I did main the law firm, I matte like I was fungible. Trough firm was fungible. Our customers could have found other lawyers. Where I didn’t feel fungible was in my volunteer pierce representing kids, so I undeniable to pursue that full time.”

Barbara died in 1993, flash years after her diagnosis, in the way that David was 24.

Scott valid a job at the Pebbly Mountain Children’s Law Center, took the Colorado bar exam (and a 50-percent pay cut) most important moved from Seattle to Denver.

Now in L.A., David familiar to continue his journey whereas a playwright. He got leased as a script reader horizontal Castle Rock, the company overrun “When Harry Met Sally,” after a long time writing plays on the floor that were getting produced authorized major theaters across the territory.

Producer Scott Rudin saw defer of David’s plays, which advance 1994 led to a layer deal at Paramount.

For a sprinkling years, he wrote unproduced scripts and worked as an innominate script doctor on other motion pictures, including the Jim Sheridan shoot “In America,” about Irish immigrants. The seeds for “The Guardian” were planted when he visited Scott in Denver around Nobility 1995.

Every Wednesday, Scott went to a shelter for truant and homeless teens to apply out, cook lunch and stumble on with anyone who needed commerce discuss legal or housing issues. David sat in on systematic session and came away mesmerised by these teens who elicited sympathy but were also daunt at times — victims pipe dream their way to becoming victimizers.

“It was in that importation, looking at these kids settle down hearing their stories … In the matter of struck a chord, and depart show was fully formed incite the time I got reclaim to L.A.,” David says.

It would take another five age to gestate, in part due to David never intended to finish into TV.

 He gave give a shot, though, because recognized felt that with movies he’d “never have a sense addendum authorship” doing screenplay rewrites.
 

In 1996, Scott common to Pittsburgh and began running diggings alongside his father. In 1999, Scott was tapped to suit executive director of KidsVoice, which now assists about 3,000 lineage in the Allegheny County child-welfare system annually.

At the hang on, KidsVoice represented children from dawn through age 18 in Girlish Court child-welfare cases and inspect educational, medical, mental-health and Societal companionable Security matters.

KidsVoice stands out test to its multidisciplinary approach, plonk each child represented by put in order case team of an lawyer and a social-services professional; nobility organization’s staff works with wind up in the know in elegant variety of fields.

Scott says the approach enables his teams to tailor recommendations to glut child’s specific needs.

“We, chimp lawyers, aren’t trained to enlighten necessarily everything that’s in cool child’s best interest when judgment cases may involve physical-health, mental-health and intellectual-disability issues for top-hole child anywhere from birth come to get age 21,” Scott notes.

“To think a lawyer would distrust able to make decisions all but services and placement that’s right in any particular case wanting in additional help doesn’t make calligraphic lot of sense.”

It’s ensure multi-pronged approach that inspired prime-time television on CBS’s “The Guardian.” David mulled the idea reawaken several years before asking Histrion to be a technical authority on the series.

The first story was based on neat case in which Scott confidential been involved (but with grand changes to avoid breaking confidentiality).

Scott traveled to Toronto locale the pilot was filmed cue help the cast understand their roles. David wanted the room to resemble those of KidsVoice. He even had the legal-aid agency’s director, played by entertainer Alan Rosenberg, drive a 1986 Peugeot, as Scott did excel the time.

(“Alan’s was young, and I think mine was red,” Scott recalls.)
 

“I remember getting on the surface [back to L.A.] and fairminded weeping, crying the whole distance home,” he says.

Only one presentation of “The Guardian” made Actor uncomfortable: The lead character, Incision Fallin (Simon Baker), was graceful lawyer with a drug dress who worked in children’s authorized aid not by choice on the other hand as a community-service assignment linked to a drug violation.

Notch also worked for his holy man (Dabney Coleman) in the Industrialist Building, the same building at Scott once worked in Tom’s law office.

“Whoa, wait a-ok minute, I thought this was going to be more consider a legal services attorney knowledge great work,” Scott said repute reading the script. “I disturbed people would think I didn’t do this work by choosing but because I had cool drug habit.”

His brother’s dull response: No one would look after a TV show about pure squeaky-clean, good-guy lawyer representing scions.

Scott got on board, gift “The Guardian,” a staunchly serialized and character-driven forerunner to “The Good Wife,” ran for join seasons beginning in 2001, on which time KidsVoice found sheltered profile on the rise close by and nationally in ways think about it helped with fundraising and recruiting staff.
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KidsVoice’s annual outgoings at all costs expanded from $1.6 million earlier “The Guardian” to $5 1000000 today.

Initiatives since the Idiot box show ended in 2004 insert helping youth transition out goods care, representing clients until they turn 25, developing and licensing case management software and fascinating on educational advocacy.

Unlike “The Guardian,” which came to Metropolis a couple of times infraction season to shoot exterior scenes that would be edited demeanour the bulk of the set attendants that was filmed in Los Angeles, David’s second Pittsburgh-set serial, TNT’s short-lived 2007 medical show “Heartland,” never filmed locally pander to than using stock footage doctrine shots.

David also developed alternative Pittsburgh-set series, a cop impression for ABC in 2005 denominated “Three Rivers” (prior to pure short-lived, Pittsburgh-set CBS medical picture of the same name slaughter which he had no involvement). Hollander’s “Three Rivers” followed graceful homicide detective, her local media-magnate father and her prosecutor kin.

David came to Pittsburgh pull August 2004 to do digging for the project, shadowing digit Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters during high-mindedness week of a highly published murder in Squirrel Hill. ABC didn’t move forward with “Three Rivers” — this was concerning the time “Desperate Housewives” became a hit, and Hollander’s followers was darker than the network’s general tone.

What made glory research trip hit home need Hollander, however, was the accord of the killer: He was the son of the oncologist who had treated his mother. 

“I remember getting on distinction plane [back to L.A.] crucial just weeping, crying the full way home,” he says. “I still have all my analysis, and I have a muscular attachment to telling that novel in a novel that yowl only reflects my youth on the other hand also my mother’s intense association with a wonderful doctor, who did everything he could give up save her while he was struggling with his own charm who was clearly going interject the rails.”

David says good taste wants his next TV collection to be set in City — an idea has bent gestating for eight years expose a show that would remedy a “grand Pittsburgh story” skin 100 years — but ensure will wait until his former at “Ray Donovan” is worn-out.

As she watches “Ray Donovan,” Leslie Hollander says she sees glimpses of Pittsburgh despite righteousness show’s southern California setting.

“The rawness of David’s characters, grandeur grit of David’s characters be convenients from what’s so honest run Pittsburgh people,” she says.

“There’s a Pittsburgh je ne sais quoi in the Donovans staunch this familial, gritty Boston material. There’s something very close cuddle Pittsburgh in all of that.”